


That Bright Shelter

by yet_intrepid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s01e08 Bugs, Gen, Pre-Series, Stanford Era, Umbrellas, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 03:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2254293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When the fire takes the apartment, takes Jess, he wouldn’t have thought he would miss an umbrella. But it’s November, and it’s December, and it’s January, and Sam is always wet, always cold. The months drag on. His nights are fire and his days are rain."</p>
<p>A study of umbrellas, safety, and Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Bright Shelter

**Author's Note:**

> "For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent.
> 
> Consider a word that refers to a thing – 'umbrella,' for example. […] Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function. […] What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? […] the umbrella ceases to be an umbrella. It has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore it can no longer express the thing.”
> 
> —Paul Auster

“Cats and dogs,” says Sam, pointing out the window. “That’s what Uncle Bobby would say. That rain is cats and dogs.”

“Get your jacket on,” says Dean.

It’s a long walk home from school to the ugly green motel, and Sam’s hoodie got a new hole in it yesterday. He wiggles into it anyway, because Dean has on his big-boy face, and that means Sam needs to listen. Then he waves goodbye to his teacher and takes Dean’s hand.

They head towards the double glass doors. Outside, Sam sees lots of gray, gray rain. It doesn’t look like cats and dogs at all. Cats and dogs are warm, and Sam is cold already.

He sees all the pretty bright umbrellas, and under them are the kids and their mommies, running to their cars. Daddy isn’t here with his car, but maybe he’s back at the motel. Maybe he brought real apple juice this time.

He feels Dean close to him and looks up. Dean has one arm out of his jacket, and he’s pulling Sam in so his head’s under the fabric, and Sam is a little less cold.

“Ready?” asks Dean.

They walk out into the rain.

A pretty lady holding hands with a boy as big as Dean goes past them under her polka-dot umbrella. If Sam had a mommy, he thinks, like a normal kid, she’d have an umbrella too, and she’d hold both their hands underneath it and they’d all be safe and warm.

——

When Sam buys his college supplies (two notebooks, five pens, three razors, laundry detergent, shampoo) with the little bit of cash he managed to save behind Dad’s back, he doesn’t think of buying an umbrella. He traipses around Stanford in the rain the same way he hunted in the rain and trained in the rain and walked three miles to a diner in the rain, one time, because Dad had taken the car and anyplace closer was too expensive to get anything resembling a meal.

Besides, it doesn’t rain much that first semester. Not compared to Louisiana or Mississippi or Tennessee. On a morning late in November, though, he steps out of his dorm to find that last night’s overcast skies have turned into a downpour. And his class is all the way across campus.

He imagines Dean’s teasing voice in his head.  _Getting soft already, college boy._

So he pulls up his hood and steps out from the doorway and tries to tell himself he’s not miserable. Still, his shoes get soaked through in seconds because he outgrew his last decent ones last month and had to get another pair. Cheap, semi-durable shoes in his absurd size don’t tend to be waterproof.

Before he’s even halfway to class, he hits a traffic jam of students with umbrellas. He stands there, trying to edge his way through the crowd, getting wetter by the second. The hood of his jacket is slicked to his forehead now and his hair is dripping into his eyes. Come on, he thinks, come on. Just let me get to class.

Finally he finds an opening and cross-cuts through the stream of people, leaving a trail of  _excuse me_ ’s behind him. Just when he’s almost reached a clear path, he has to step suddenly to avoid someone’s foot and lands his foot in an inches-deep puddle.

“Dude,” says someone, “you fucking splashed me!”

“I’m sorry,” he calls out as he makes his escape. His backpack slips on his slick shoulders and he hefts it back up. Damn, he thinks, what if that’s soaked through too? He’ll dry out, but his textbooks and his notes and his  _homework_ —

He starts walking faster, head down, watching where he puts his feet. But then there’s a hand on his arm and he spins around, tensing, hyper-alert. Not like there’s a monster, not here, but maybe the guy he splashed wants to pick a fight; maybe—

When he blinks the water out of his eyes, he thinks he sees sunlight.

When he blinks the daze away, he sees a smile. He sees blond hair that’s hardly wet at all. It’s a student, a girl he vaguely recognizes. Her hand is on his, holding a green-and-white striped umbrella over them both.

And then she’s pressed it into his hand and slipped out from beneath and suddenly she’s on the other side of the walkway, pulling a tiny purple umbrella from her bookbag and popping it up over her head. Disappearing. Leaving Sam standing under the green-and-white umbrella.

When he blinks, she’s too far away for him to call out to her.

——

In junior year, when Sam and Jess officially start dating, he offers her back her green-and-white striped umbrella. She takes it, but she gives him a new one for Christmas. It’s sturdy and ocean-blue, completely collapsible and easy to carry. Sam uses it in even the lightest of rains. He feels warm beneath it, like he does in the sunlight of her smile.

——

When the fire takes the apartment, takes Jess, he wouldn’t have thought he would miss an umbrella. But it’s November, and it’s December, and it’s January, and Sam is always wet, always cold. The months drag on. His nights are fire and his days are rain.

When January comes and they land in Tennessee, which apparently is getting a higher monthly average than its already high norm, Sam breaks. He barrels into the motel room after Dean and starts stripping off layers after layer of soaked clothing, tossing it on the floor.

“I hate rain!” he shouts, knowing he’s being petulant and not giving a damn.

“Wow, Sam,” says Dean, “let me know how you really feel.”

“I hate it,” he says again, kicking off his shoes and dragging a new shirt out of his bag. “I can’t live like this; I can’t  _stand_  it. Not only do we chase down monsters, we also have to chase down rain! It’s stopped raining in West Virginia by now. And Ohio. And every other place we’ve been. Are we there? No, we’re here. In the rain.”

“Gotta go where the job takes us,” Dean grunts. He collapses in front of the TV, wet as he is, and clicks it on. Sam stares at him.

“Honestly, Dean, don’t you think this is a little ridiculous?”

Dean looks back over his shoulder. “What’s ridiculous? You? You’re plenty ridiculous, sure. Never thought I’d hear you say it though.”

“Not me,” Sam says, “ _this_.” He kicks at his pile of wet clothes. “I mean, can’t we be normal enough to own one damn umbrella?”

“Oh,” says Dean. He digs for his wallet and flips Sam a credit card. “There. Get me one while you’re at it, will you?”

——

Sam buys the umbrellas long and black, like mourning clothes. “Awesome,” says Dean. “Like X-Files.”

They stand together in a housing development in Oklahoma, holding their separate umbrellas as they watch a body carried out of a house, and all the colors have faded out.

Dean said yesterday he’d take their family over normal, but Dean’s idea of normal doesn’t include smiles like soft morning sunlight or houseplants overtaking the windowsills. Dean doesn’t understand when Sam tries to talk about the baseball encyclopedia that was a constant joke because neither of them wanted it, or the way they’d huddle together over issues of  _National Geographic_  for new pictures to hang on their walls.

Dean’s never had purple, ocean-blue, and green-and-white striped umbrellas. Sam has, and he knows they keep the rain away better than the plain ones ever could.

But the world he’s returned to makes no room for that bright shelter.


End file.
